A painful number

I had to work for most of the past weekend. I've been really enjoying my job again lately, so in itself this wasn't going to be a big deal. On Saturday night, though, I worked with one of my colleagues who is pregnant. I've mentioned her before in terms of an awkward conversation we had when no one told her I'd also recently had a baby.

I've been trying very hard to show interest in other people's pregnancies, usually as a way of staving off the awkwardness of not mentioning the elephant in the room, so to speak. As I currently know a lot of pregnant people, this results in me talking to people about their pregnancies a lot, which is hard because I have to be constantly reminded that so many other people are in the enviable position of assuming they get a baby at the end of their 40-week pregnancy and are able to excitedly plan for it. I can't begrudge them this innocence, as I, too, had it not so many months ago. I wouldn't wish them to have the carpet pulled from underneath them like I did, but I also wish I didn't have to constantly re-live the tragedy of my pregnancy in comparison.

At any rate, I was making polite conversation and genuinely making an effort to let her talk about her excitement. Amongst chat of her finding out the baby was a girl, her house renovations and decoration plans, she casually mentioned that she was 23 weeks pregnant now. That part of the conversation hit me like a brick and upon hearing it tears sprung instantly to my eyes before I even had a chance to consider my reaction.

23 weeks. 

That's as pregnant as I ever was, as I ever might be.

Max's beautiful 23-week feet. They couldn't be any more perfectly formed.

To this girl, it feels like there is still such a long way to go. The terms 23 weeks; the 'threshold of viability'; neonatologist; survival rates; significant disability; neonatal death, mean nothing especial to her. But just hearing the phrase was enough to take me right back there, to the day I found out what the significance of that gestation really was. 

She either did not notice my reaction, or she very politely ignored it, but it stayed with me the entire night, and has done pretty much every moment since then. Every chance I had I couldn't stop staring at her tummy. She'd only just begun to look pregnant. When Max was born, so had I. All I could think about was that I knew exactly what her baby looked like. As she sat casually reading a magazine her body was doing important work in preparing her baby's major organs for life outside the womb. When I see her again in a fortnight, her baby will have already passed the point that Max never got to reach, where the odds of survival if anything went wrong became pretty good.

I said nothing to her of my thoughts. I did not remind her that when I was 23 weeks pregnant my baby was born. But I did tell her one thing. I said 'you should take some photos of how lovely you look right now. Take some photos of your tummy. You might feel silly doing it, but you'll never regret having them'. And I left it at that. 

I don't have a single photo from the time I was pregnant. Not even a casual one. It's one of the things I regret most now that I have little to show for the fact that this momentous thing happened to me. I have no stretch-marks, no stitches, no baby to prove it. I had been so sick and so miserable for most of that time that documenting the process seemed like the last thing on my mind, even though I'd started out with the good intentions of doing so in a journal.

Perhaps my prolific posting on this blog is my way of ameliorating that regret. I now have a constant desire to document my journey, and Max's story. I've never before stuck with any 'project' as diligently as I have this blog. Sadly, I feel it's one of my greatest achievements to almost-daily check in here and make something of my experiences. It's as if I'm desperate to make up the lost ground.

I've been thinking a lot lately of what the purpose of this blog actually is. Since I felt the need to make it private as a way of protecting myself from the judgement of people who might either wilfully misread me, or tragically misunderstand me, it's something that's been on my mind. Why am I writing? Who am I writing for? 

The Edge of Life

There was an absolutely beautifully written, heart-wrenching article on p38 of The Age's (Melbourne) Magazine today about babies born on 'the edge of life', like Max was. The article is about babies born at 23 and 24 weeks in the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit) at the Mercy Hospital for Women in Heidelberg, right near my house. I could not even get through the first paragraph without the arrival of violent tears.

I didn't know who the journalist, Kathy Evans, was, but I thought she should be commended for capturing both the vulnerability and strength shown by those families in such an honest, compelling way. When I googled her, however, I discovered just why her article was so arrestingly written - she gave birth to a baby with Downs Syndrome. She gets it - the uncertainty, the pain, the grieving for the life, and the baby, that should have been yours.

Evans wrote an incredible article about her daughter, called Tuesday's Child, for which she deservedly one a couple of awards. You can read it here, and you should. I have never read anything so moving.

I cannot find an electronic copy of today's article to link to, so these images will have to suffice to give you an idea of its content. If you can get a hold of today's magazine in The Age, I really encourage you to do so - spend the time it takes to read 2000 words in those families' shoes, and count your own blessings, as I do, realising how thankful I am, despite everything, that Max did not have to suffer the pain and distress of months of invasive care in NICU or face a life of profound disability.